论文总字数：27651字

摘 要

本文研究了我国初中英语口语的教学现状，旨在提出一些提高初中生英语口语能力的策略。本文首先指出提高初中生英语口语能力存在诸多困难，这也是导致初中生英语口语教学现状不容乐观的原因。基于对初中生英语口语问题出现原因的分析，结合新课标的理念，笔者提出了五种策略，希望最终能对改善初中生英语口语教学和提高初中生英语口语能力有所帮助。

关键词：初中生；英语口语；策略；新课标

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 1

3. Current Situation of Oral English Instruction in Junior Middle School 3

3.1 Teaching Methods 3

3.2 Teaching Concepts 4

3.3 Studying 4

4. Causes of Students’ Difficulty in Improving Oral English 5

4.1 Lack of Teaching Materials and Advanced Teaching Equipments 5

4.2 Superficial Understanding of New Curriculum Standard 5

4.3 Influence of Exam-Oriented Education System 6

5. Strategies for Improving Students’ Oral English Ability 6

5.1 Improving the Quality of Oral English Teaching in Class 6

5.2 Practicing Oral English After Class 7

5.3 Carrying out Oral Tests 8

5.4 Strengthening English Input 8

5.5 Designing Task-Based Oral Activities 9

6. Conclusion 10

Works Cited 11

1. Introduction

With the further deepening of China’ s opening-up policy, the development of global economy and cultural exchanges, English communicative competence is increasingly valued and the importance of oral English becomes prominent. As a result, the need of elites with good oral English is rising. Currently, most of schools begin to emphasize oral English teaching and the development of students’ communicative competence.

Unfortunately, regardless of the importance of oral English, the current situation of studying and teaching in junior middle school is not pleasing. In most junior middle schools, the traditional “spoon-feeding” is still the leading method, which has a lot of disadvantages. Students are lack of consciousness, willpower and motivation to speak English. A considerable number of students have not recognized the importance of oral English. They are also unwilling to spend much time improving oral English. Students’ motivation to learn English is not clear and they feel anxious from time to time. In this thesis, the author hopes to provide some help to improve teachers’ oral English and teaching methods by studying the strategies of improving oral English of junior middle school students.

This thesis is divided into six parts. The first and second parts are introduction and literature review respectively. The third part is the discussion of current situation of oral English teaching and studying in junior middle school from the perspective of teaching and studying. Reasons for students’ difficulty in improving oral English are analyzed next. Part Five plays a crucial role in this thesis. The author mainly discusses the strategies for improving junior middle school students’ oral English. Five strategies are put forward. The last part is the conclusion, which summarizes the whole study.

2. Literature Review

Speaking is one of main language output skills. American linguist Krashen put forward the Second Language Acquisition Theory in the 1980s, which attracted much attention in both linguistic field and language teaching circle (Krashen, 1981: 55).

Effected by Krashen’s input hypothesis, English teaching focused on the language input at that time. Teachers had stressed students’ listening, reading, but ignored the language output for a long time.

On account of the defects of Krashen’s Input Hypothesis, second language acquisition researcher Merrill Swain proposes the language output assumptions in 1985. He believes that language input is important for language acquisition, but it can not make people use language accurately and fluently. According to Swain, language output plays a major role in the following two aspects: function 1) noting and triggering; function 2) testing the hypothesis (Swain M, 1985: 70). Swain points out that although comprehensible language input plays an important role in language acquisition, learners must rely on meaningful language output to achieve accuracy and fluency of applying target language.

Zhu Mingju proposed in the paper that the input which best encourages learners’ thinking in English is most desirable, but input alone cannot lead to oral English competence, and output exercises should be devised in the way that they benefit the cultivation of learners’ English abilities both in carrying out speech plan and in making speech plan (Zhu Mingju, 2000: 21)

Zhao Na’s study aims at investigating and expounding the effects of oral output on second language acquisition and making attempts to find out an effective way to facilitate oral output and improve the quality of foreign language teaching nationwide (Zhao Na, 2009: 38).

In recent years, many books and research papers on teaching methods of oral English in junior middle school have been published. They make analysis of the current situation and offer suggestions on this topic, showing that students have recognized the importance of speaking ability.

What’s more, English instruction in junior middle school of China has gone through much reform and the importance of teaching has been strengthened. To some extent, teachers have paid a lot of attention to developing students’ oral English. However, the progress is not evident and the results are not always pleasing. Students’ abilities of using English to express their thoughts and feelings are very limited, most remaining the level of greeting.

Li Shenglian summarizes the current existing problems and its reasons for oral English teaching (Li Shenglian, 2010: 48). Besides, it also designs different teaching methods and procedures according to students’ English proficiency, and introduces the exact strategies in oral English teaching. Similarly, Wang Qiang summarizes the principles for teaching speaking and designs several speaking tasks (Wang Qiang, 2004: 67).

After reviewing relevant SLA theories and referring to a large amount of books and studies at home and abroad, the author intends to probe into strategies to improve oral English teaching in junior middle school. Generally speaking, China has increasingly underlined the improvement of junior middle school students’ speaking ability. Students’ oral English is stepping into a new level.

3. Current Situation of Oral English Instruction in Junior Middle School

New Curriculum Standard stresses the development of students’ ability to apply language in practice appropriately. It puts listening and speaking in the first place all the time. Listening is the basis while speaking is the key to teaching. This is the requirement of quality education, symbol of social progress and the tendency of English teaching reform. However, there are still some problems in practice. The author analyzes the current situation of oral English teaching and studying in junior middle school from three perspectives: teaching methods, teaching concepts and studying.

3.1 Teaching Methods

The teaching methods are still out of date. At present, the majority of junior middle schools still adopt the traditional “spoon-feeding” teaching method and teachers who teach oral English play a leading role in the classroom. Under the circumstances, students just learn boring words, phrases and grammar passively. Some teachers are even completely dependent on the teaching materials (Li Shanshan, 2011: 32). This is totally contrary to the New Curriculum Standard principles which specify students are the main body of English classes.

Most English teachers still teach in a process of explaining words, analyzing the text, doing exercises and taking exams. Students in the classroom always acquire knowledge passively and they seldom learn it initiatively. Although the traditional teaching method helps students accumulate a certain amount of vocabulary and grammar and lay a solid language foundation to a certain extent, it ignores the development of students’ oral English. In such English class, the new materials with advanced teaching concepts are just materials with the printed English exercises only. Students can do exercises on the paper well, but can not speak fluently in the communication.

3.2 Teaching Concepts

The teaching ideas are narrow. For most junior middle school English teachers, they only pay more attention to the language points. So in the process of lesson preparation, they only care about whether the grasp of the text structure is reasonable, and whether they explain the comprehensive and detailed points of each lesson successfully. They care most about whether students have a good grasp of the language points. Few English teachers devote their time to studying how to improve students’ oral English. New Curriculum Standard requires that teachers should especially focus on improving students’ ability in English thinking and expression to help students form awareness of intercultural communication and basic communicative competence. Obviously, the teaching ideas are contrary to the above requirement. The result is often like this: teachers teach tiredly and students learn bitterly, so the effect is unsatisfying.

3.3 Studying

Students’ oral English proficiency is worrying. Most students are lack of vocabulary, which contributes to students’ failure of selecting words appropriately and flexibly to express their ideas. Laziness may be the main factor that leads to their inadequate vocabulary. Besides, students’ speaking is filled with many grammatical errors. As a result, they can not convey what they really mean to listeners from time to time. What’s more, few students can not grasp it well. Few students pay enough attention to their English intonation and pronunciation despite of the importance of the two elements in oral English. When reading English in class, they just care about reciting the article, while they care little about the accuracy and fluency of oral English.

Students’ attitude towards practicing oral English is not satisfying. For some students, getting high scores is their only goal in English learning, which has directly influenced their enthusiasm about oral English learning. What’s worse, a considerable number of students may recognize the importance of oral English, but they dare not speak in front of others. They are afraid of making mistakes and being laughed at by other students. At the same time, their initiative is not enough to improve oral English.

Influenced by Chinese culture and way of thinking, many students tend to create some English expressions mechanically, which we call “chinglish”. For example, “give you some color see see” actually means someone gives a warning or punishment to others. Similar examples appear commonly among students in junior middle school. It is difficult to wipe out the tendency thoroughly in a short period for Chinese culture has deeply affected students’ cognitive structure. Most of students do not form the way of thinking in English.

4. Causes of Students’ Difficulty in Improving Oral English

By studying the current situation of oral English in junior middle school carefully, the author finds that causes of the unsatisfying current situation of oral English studying can be objective and subjective. The author explores the causes of students’ difficulty in improving oral English from the three perspectives: teaching materials, understanding of New Curriculum Standard and education system.

4.1 Lack of Teaching Materials and Advanced Teaching Equipments

Due to a lack of money, some rural secondary schools are not well equipped with sufficient teaching materials and modern devices. The teaching in junior middle schools should not just depend on English textbooks. The schools should add the elements such as language labs, multimedia classrooms, English newspapers and magazines and so on.

4.2 Superficial Understanding of New Curriculum Standard

Teachers do not have a thorough and deep understanding of the New Curriculum Standard. New Curriculum Standard requires that junior middle school English teaching should foster students’ creative ability, practical skills and lifelong learning, so teachers in English teaching process should not only teach students basic knowledge of English, but also focus on cultivating students’ creative ability, practical skills and lifelong learning. However, at the present stage, many English teachers have not really understood its meaning and they still use the old teaching method in teaching process. Many older teachers also show negative attitudes towards New Curriculum Standard. In contrast, they are more willing to adopt the old teaching methods because they have been using them for so many years, and they do not want to try new teaching methods.

4.3 Influence of Exam-Oriented Education System

Achieving high scores is still the primary goal for junior middle school students, because they have the same goal of entering excellent senior high schools and passing the national entrance examination. Most students think that carrying out oral English training is just a waste of time. Instead, they are more willing to spend time finishing some English exercises. In fact, teachers have the same goal as the students. Teachers may spend their time explaining English papers as much as possible just for the examination.

5. Strategies for Improving Students’ Oral English Ability

From the above part, objective conditions that lead to the unsatisfying current situation are almost out of control by teachers. However, teachers can make contributions to improving students’ oral English in junior middle school. As we all know, English class is vital for students to practice their English, so how to improve the quality of oral English teaching in class matters. Designing task-based activities can be another choice for teachers to help students enhance oral English. For students, taking advantage of extra-curriculum time is the key to improving their oral English. They can practice English after class more freely for the relaxing atmosphere. Besides, carrying out oral test is a good method to stimulate students’ motivation. The author explains these strategies one by one in the following part.

5.1 Improving the Quality of Oral English Teaching in Class

How to improve the quality of oral English teaching in class is the key to improving students’ oral English. Firstly, designing an attractive lead-in can create a great atmosphere of oral English communication. Attractive lead-in activities can arouse students’ interest in learning, stimulate their initiative, bring enjoyment to students and lay a good foundation for new content.

Secondly, the real English communication environment is vital. This requires teachers to speak English as much as possible in English class, which can make students practice their oral English communication skills in the true English communication environment.

Thirdly, teachers should enrich teaching methods and encourage students to take part in classroom activities. Teachers may use pictures, audio, video and other forms of teaching aids to strengthen students’ oral English. In order to encourage students to participate actively in class, teachers should also make every effort to design classroom activities. For example, when dealing with the topic “What are you doing for vacation” in 8B Unit 3, teachers can allow students to prepare a holiday schedule in English and encourage students to share with each other.

5.2 Practicing Oral English After Class

Time of one class is limited after all. In addition to training students’ oral ability, teachers have to put more energy into explaining basic knowledge of English, so students and teachers should make full use of the extra-curriculum activities to improve oral English. Students will be divided into several cooperative groups in order to practice oral English after class effectively and consolidate what they have learned in class. For example, English corner is a good place where students may exchange English study experience, stimulate their learning interest and broaden their horizons. Giving students more time to strengthen their English thinking and enhance the quality of oral English expression. Moreover, the atmosphere after class is more relaxing; students may take a variety of forms of communication and then form the habit of thinking and expressing initiatively. If English partners are not easy to get, students can create an English environment by speaking English to themselves. However, teachers should offer some principles and instructions to students to ensure the quality of training oral English.

Huang Yuanshen proposed that successful English learning was largely decided by the efforts one made after class (Huang Yuanshen, 2007: 51). However, in junior middle schools, extracurricular learning is very lack and not taken seriously, so the effect is far from expected. In class, doing oral communication activities can not meet the needs of most students because there are too many students in class. Extra-curriculum is an extension of the class. For language learning, extra-curricular learning is even more important than the curricular learning. If extra time can be fully utilized, students can improve the efficiency of learning English greatly.

Since the extra time can be fully utilized, then what content students should complete is worthy of our careful consideration. Speaking is the process of output. Teachers can let students retell some articles or English stories in their own words. This process can really help students absorb knowledge. At the same time, recitation can make students conduct action of output independently. Recitation takes some time, so it can not be met within the class. Recitation is a relatively autonomous behavior, and it does not need on-site supervision by teachers. It can be said that recitation is the most suitable teaching method that can be arranged in extra-curriculum. It is a good way to improve students’ oral skills and also beneficial to the entire English learning.

5.3 Carrying out Oral Tests

Carrying out oral tests is an effective measure to ensure the training of oral English, which can cause students’ enough attention to practice speaking. Besides, tests enable students to evaluate their learning effect of oral English. According to the teaching timetable, teachers can decide when to take the exams, be it a midterm exam or final. Teachers can use several forms to examine students oral English.

1) Reading aloud

Students scan the given reading materials in limited time and then read aloud. This form may urge students to read a lot after class and form good pronunciation and intonation.

2) Short talk

For example, talk about your hobby in six sentences; what do you think are the essential qualities of young people in the 21st century? Give a talk in ten minutes. This will not only test students’ oral skills, but also can test their imagination.

3) Oral interview

This kind of oral test is a very common form of testing oral communication. Teachers may test students’ oral English ability through different kinds of elicitation techniques.

5.4 Strengthening English Input

Krashen’ Input Hypothesis describes the role and significance of inputs. Krashen believes that the right and proper language input will make the effect of language learning better (Stephen D.Krashen,1981: 55). Effective language input is a prerequisite for teaching materials. English teaching of junior middle school focuses on training students to use English for communicating.

Therefore, teachers should provide input for students to facilitate language learning. For example, students can carry out intense training. Make an oral composition about a certain topic in one minute for the first time and record the composition on tape at the same time. And then listen to the composition and find out the room for improvement. Similarly, make the same composition in two minutes for the second time and also record it. And at last repeat the above procedure in three minutes.

Recitation is another way to enhance language input to students. Teachers can arrange some commonly spoken recite, like common oral expressions of sentences and grammatical structures. This input will not only let students have access to more English, but also deepen their understanding and accumulate knowledge of the language. They will learn to express their ideas from the aspect of English, getting rid of the influence of Chinese thinking to achieve the purpose of improving oral ability finally. Therefore, carrying out English recitation is a good strategy to improve the oral English skills of junior middle school students.

Reading is another kind of input. Students should read aloud as often as possible. For instance, students can read some English tongue twisters loudly and quickly with one or two cakes of candy in their mouth to train their oral cavity muscle and tongues suitable for English pronunciation. The following English tongue twisters are given as examples:
　　 1) A big black bug bit the back of a big black bear.

2) The big black bear bit back the big black bug.
　　 3) This fish has a thin fin; that fish has a fat fin; this fish is a fish that has a thinner fin than that fish.

5.5 Designing Task-Based Oral Activities

The task-based language teaching which aims to encourage students’ motivation to improve oral English is a teaching method advocated by the New Curriculum Standard (Li Xia amp; Ai Pinge, 2007: 31). The advantage of task-based teaching methods is allowing students to participate actively in the pre-task to acquire knowledge in the interaction. Setting the task in the classroom can encourage students’ learning motivation to improve their oral English in the process of completing the task.

A major initiative of the New Curriculum Standard reform is to emphasize task-based learning. The task-based oral teaching class employs specific tasks as a carrier to complete the learning process and it integrates knowledge and skills. Students can improve their English oral competence gradually during the process of completing the tasks.

The specific cases are discussed as below. In Unit 10 of the book in the eighth grade, there is a topic I’m going to be a basketball player. The mission of the unit is to enable students to know how to achieve a dream. The core of this task is relatively large but teachers can use the form of brainstorming to guide class to elicit socially popular profession or occupation they know. On this basis, the core task can be divided into several small tasks. Task One: Operate occupational tendency survey in class to elect the most popular occupations in the class. Task Two: Learn about dreams and actions they take to achieve the dream (in the form of interviews, group discussions).

For another example, students can be divided into several groups to complete a specific task. Give several groups a topic “My Favorite Animal.” Students in different groups discuss and share ideas with each other concerning the topic. At last, one student of each group gives a free talk. This method can train students’ English pronunciation and intonation. Besides, cooperative ability can be improved during the process.

6. Conclusion

In summary, faced with the current situation of oral English instruction, teachers and students should raise the awareness of improving oral English competence. Although it is difficult to improve it in a short time, teachers still need to try effective strategies to help students speak English well.

In this thesis, the author puts forward some strategies, such as improving the quality of oral English teaching in class, carrying out oral tests and so on. Through conducting these effective strategies, students’ oral English can be improved sooner or later. During the process of study, the author finds that the key to improving students’ English oral proficiency is to stimulate students’ interest and motivation of learning and develop students’ self-learning ability from different aspects. How to teach oral English well is an important issue for all English teachers in China. The author believes that, through the cooperation and hard work of teachers, students, parents, schools and the community, students will be able to improve their oral English competence.

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